


Redistribution

by freshbakedlady



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Mad Science, Multi, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshbakedlady/pseuds/freshbakedlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard Stark's retrieval of the cosmic cube opens up all sorts of possibilities in the search for Steve. Too bad Howard's aim is off by a few universes. Peggy decides she's not really complaining, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redistribution

**Author's Note:**

> Over on Tumblr, [yvesvak](http://yvesvak.tumblr.com/) prompted me for "steve/peggy/bucky with fictional character from dystopia [novel]," from [this meme](http://xaquaangelx.tumblr.com/post/102264688935/more-aus-im-a-immortal-who-just-woke-up-from-a). This was the first idea I got for it, but it lacked the fictional character aspect, so I wrote [something else](http://joycesully.tumblr.com/post/108221144194/steve-peggy-bucky-with-fictional-character-from). I liked this idea too much to abandon it, though, so here: have some dimension-jumping, OT3 fix-it.
> 
> Warning for discussion of character death in the context of alternate universes.

“I must admit, Howard,” Peggy said to him across the cube’s pool of light, “this isn’t what I had hoped your search would turn up.”

“Don’t look so blue, Carter. I’m just getting started.”

***

“Barnes?” The figure on the portal’s landing pad snapped to attention. Metal encased both his arms in smooth armor plates. More crawled up his neck, albeit only in fine tendrils, to curl around his eyes and ears. Sinister lights within cast strange shadows across his face. Peggy reached for him with the hand that had flown to her mouth.

As he noticed her, he shifted down to parade rest. “Commander Carter?” The lights dimmed; the plating over his right arm retracted into a thin strip across his shoulder. “How did I—“

“You survived the fall from the train?” That was the easiest question to start with, at least. Hard on its heels, though, came the questions of who had retrieved Barnes and what had been done to him in the intervening time.

“Train?” Barnes rubbed the back of his neck with his still-metallic left hand. “Don’t know anything about that. Far as I know, I ought to be in the briefing room, getting my orders.”

Peggy straightened her spine and nodded to herself. Not Steve’s Barnes, then, not the one she knew. “Howard, I do believe you’ve brought me the wrong gentleman.”

Over by the portal’s controls, Howard turned the comb over in his gloved hands. “Damn it, what did Rogers and Barnes have to share _everything_ for?”

***

“This goes rather beyond a simple calibration error,” Peggy protested. Howard’s basement laboratory, below his New York residence (well, one of them, anyway) had become the de facto headquarters for this particular bit of mad science.

With one leg thrown over the arm, Barnes sat in a deeply scarred chair that had, until their arrival, housed an assortment of greasy wrenches. While his unusual enhancements had proven fully functional, he had been unable to contact any known associate. (Howard had, of course, done everything short of dissect Barnes to get at the technology. Peggy had never seen Howard stumped by anything, and she found the experience slightly unsettling.) For lack of any better response, Barnes had classified the experience as leave and set about eating anything Howard’s man, Jarvis, could provide.

Peggy tapped a spare piece of pipe on the tabletop for emphasis. “James isn’t even from our—“ She hesitated over the possible explanations they had come up with. Timeline. Universe. Reality. “Our world,” she settled on. “You’re going to end up fishing Steve out of a pool on Mars, instead of the Atlantic.”

“It’ll be better this time, now that I’ve gotten the original samples from SSR storage. No more guesswork and stray hairs from borrowed combs.”

***

“Some things never change,” Peggy said when she found Barnes liberating some of Howard’s liquor cabinet.

Barnes pulled another glass down and set about pouring for both of them. “Fellas the same all over, huh? And here I thought I might be enough to turn a pretty head around here.”

“This must all be terribly strange for you.” Peggy slammed back the shot. Barnes, to his credit, just raised an eyebrow and poured her another.

“Can’t say I miss being shot at on the daily. Things ain’t going so well, where I come from. At least here, you won your war.”

Peggy looked at the two of them in the mirror behind the bar. She had lived this scene once before. No, perhaps not. After all, it had been Steve that time, putting Barnes back together after everything that had happened. This Barnes had his own scars and shadows, but he talked like the boy who had trailed so readily after Steve. Even his voice made her ache; she kept waiting for Steve to chime in at every inviting pause.

“If I’da known Howard could rig something up to zap us out of there, Steve and me would have been gone years ago. I’d let him deck me for it after, but at least he’d still be alive.” He met Peggy’s eyes in their reflections. “You lost him too, huh?”

Peggy cleared her throat. “I lost both of you, I’m afraid.”

Barnes turned a cocky grin on her. “Yeah? The beds extra crowded in this world?”

“I beg your—“ Peggy flushed as understanding hit her. “Neither you nor I were lucky enough, I’m afraid, and Steve was never unlucky enough to have us both at the same time.”

Barnes pressed the edge of his glass to his lower lip. “Pity,” he said simply. His lips were very red, and his voice carried the sweetest of ghosts for her. She had no doubt he felt much the same about her and whatever graces Steve had left behind in her. And, well, she had done worse things in life than replace his glass with her own lips, taking and giving comfort in equal measure.

***

“Still, mustn’t grumble,” Peggy said into the soft dampness of his hair. He had pillowed his head on her breasts, careful to keep the jagged machinery away from her more tender bits. He made a questioning noise that hummed across her bare skin. “We could have ended up in a world where none of us make it out alive.”

His broad back expanded hard under her stroking palms. “Yeah.” He remained silent for so long, Peggy began to drift off into satisfied sleep. She heard him, though, when he said, “Maybe there’s a world where we all make it, too.”

***

“Howard, I swear, if you bring another poor boy through that portal with no way to send him back—“

Goggles askew on his forehead, Howard flailed his arms in enthusiasm. “Blood and tissue samples! I’ll definitely get him this time. Original flavor Steve Rogers, guaranteed.” He waved a hand vaguely in Bucky’s direction. “I’ll sort him out...later.” His patter needed work.

“Oh, Howard,” Peggy muttered even as she turned away from the flash of light the portal produced. Barnes, apparently unbothered by the glare, watched beside her. Did he hope for a Steve he would recognize? Or one untouched by either of their wars? Peggy wanted the Steve she knew, yet she could hardly claim to be disappointed by the unexpected gift of this Barnes, for however long she had him.

Barnes made a choked off noise next to her. “Oh, brother.” Peggy turned and—

“Original flavor, you say?” On the landing pad, five feet and change of Steve Rogers uncurled from where he had crashed through the portal. Peggy’s hands itched to curl around the frail shoulders, to cup the sharp point of the chin. She had known this boy, at least. Maybe it was just an earlier version of him. Perhaps it was not a difference of world, but of time.

Behind her, Howard threw down his goggles. “Son of a—“ He slammed the basement door behind him.

***

“Did Dr. Erskine’s formula fail, or did you never meet him?” Peggy tried to keep the hope out of her voice. This Steve regarded them with suspicion. She could feel Barnes fidgeting next to her.

Steve reached out for the pipe Peggy had bandied about some weeks before. With no apparent effort, Steve squeezed it flat as a tube of toothpaste. “Formula worked just fine. Sorry I ain’t much to look at.”

Giddy laughter burst out of Barnes. “Pal, you got no idea.”

***

“So, I suppose we should get the unpleasant bit out of the way,” Peggy said when they had relocated their new Steve to the more comfortable parts of the house. A sunroom overlooked the English garden surrounding the manor. That and the drizzle made Peggy feel positively at home.

Steve kept himself away from them. He had refused the food Jarvis brought and curled in a chair by himself. Peggy allowed herself to press against Barnes where they shared the chesterfield. Steve examined the room and the soggy lawn outside with the same look that had calculated escape routes from enemy bases.

“And what’s that?”

“Finding out what tragedy has befallen you in your own world. I expect it’s too much to ask that we’re all happily retired. Which ones of us are dead, then?”

Steve folded his hands in his lap. It was bad, then. “Pegs, uh, Miss Carter.” He dug a couple fingers into his temple. “ _Peggy_ , you died in the explosion they rigged up to take out Erskine. They brought most of the building down. I was still in that coffin of Stark’s. Between that and the treatment, I dug my way out okay. Everyone else.” He shook his head.

“Oh dear. Well, it was my turn, anyway.”

“What about me?” She could feel the tremble in Barnes.

Steve regarded him out of the corner of his eye. “Buck, you. You’re alive. Didn’t get the jewelry, though.” There was obviously something more. Steve fidgeted like he regretted not accepting at least a cup of tea to hide behind now. “Hydra got you. Flipped you.”

Alive, but lost all the same. Barnes sucked his tongue across his teeth. “Well. What do you say, Peggy? He win the prize?”

***  
“What are you waiting for?” Peggy asked at the door to Barnes’s room. “We’re going, aren’t we?”

“Not sure he’s going to want to see me,” Barnes said even as he shrugged a shirt on.

Steve let them in, too proud to let his obvious discomfort win out. “Little late for social calls.”

“Is it?” Peggy strode across the room to shut the curtains.

Steve looked between her and Barnes. “You’re really all right? Where you come from, I mean. You’re not. You know.”

Barnes put a heavy hand on Steve’s shoulder; despite the size difference, Steve did not rock at all under the touch. “You and me, we were fuckin’ heroes.” Peggy can see the bravado there. Barnes hasn’t shown the slightest sign of thinking so highly of himself. She takes his point, though. In the question of many worlds and the possibilities they contain, there is something to be said for painting with a broad brush.

“James and I are not strangers, Steve. Whatever details are different, we three are still.” Words suddenly failed her. What word was there to describe how, across infinite possibilities, they continued to circle around each other? How did she say that they had gone looking for someone else and found each other just fine?

Steve dragged Barnes down to his level with a hand in his hair. Heat bloomed along Peggy’s veins at the sight of them together. Steve kissed Barnes like it would bring one or both of them back to life at long last. Steve had a point as well. Some things did not need words.

***

“We’re going to need a bigger bed,” Peggy mused. “Especially if Howard manages to bring us any more strays.” Peggy and Barnes linked hands across Steve’s thin body. They had him well and truly pinned between them. Her nights with Barnes before this had been comforting and sorrowful by turns. The three of them together had been desperate. An agony of desire had gripped Peggy for the men she had never had and the men she had never expected to find.

“Thought he was working out how to send us back,” Barnes said without relish. He hitched a leg across more of Steve and Peggy both.

Steve, who had been quiet and intense since arriving, said, “I don’t want to go back.” He kept his eyes closed and his face turned to the ceiling, letting the dark cover the confession. His voice cracked. “I know I should, I know I’m needed, but—“

“Oh, my darling,” Peggy sighed out, “there is no shortage of need in this or any other world.” She curled closer to both of them. For once, let them be the ones who got what they needed and not the ones who sacrificed it all. Let their worlds survive with a few holes in them, rather than their hearts.


End file.
